Just Your Typical College Student

KALAMAZOO, Mich.--Leeor Schweitzer looks like your average Kalamazoo College student. The sophomore dresses the part, wearing a faded brown Pink Floyd T-shirt, light grey jeans, and even a Kalamazoo College lanyard that holds his Kalamazoo identification card. His reddish-brown beard and hair, fair skin, and clean accent don't mark him as foreign. You'd never suspect that this young man is an immigrant.

But Schweitzer was born in Israel on September 29, 1988. His father is a research biologist who completed his doctorate in Israel but finished his post-doctorate in the U.S. The Schweitzer family, including Leeor and his older brother, Eran, relocated to Portland, Ore., in 1996, have no initial problems with the immigration process. Leeor was eight, and is now totally Americanized.

Schweitzer, 20, seems to be the example of the ideal immigrant. Around Kalamazoo College's campus, he's known as the first-year who overloaded, taking four classes winter quarter - and doing so successfully. He's involved in more student organizations than the average student, including EnvOrg, the Campus Energy Group, and the college's taiko drumming group. Schweitzer is also president of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy group, and was a LandSea leader this fall. However, he and his family have had their own struggles with American immigration standards and policies after the initial process of immigration.

Asked about these standards and policies, he responds, "I think they suck." In his opinion, many immigration policies are superfluous. "The U.S. is really stringent," he says. "The amount of unnecessary paperwork is amazing."

For Schweitzer, some immigration procedures are even insulting. He tells a story about his brother Eran's return from study abroad in Costa Rica. Eran had infected mosquito bites when he returned, and had a doctor's note noting this. But U.S. immigration officers quarantined him at the airport, saying the marks looked like "cigarette burns" and talking about him as if he wasn't in the room.

Schweitzer says that's the worst part, being treated almost subhuman. It's as if being an immigirant implies a lack of understanding. He hadn't been able to obtain work-study until this year because of his immigrant status. Likewise, his mother hadn't been able to work until this year for the same reason. But he and his family are overcoming these obstacles, and look forward to a time when other immigrants will not have to undergo what he's been through.

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